What do you think?
Rate this book
Win a free print copy of this book!
23 days and 10:13:58
10 copies available
U.S. only
Somebody Worth Killing
Not yet published
Expected 16 Jun 26Win a free print copy of this book!
23 days and 10:13:58
10 copies available
U.S. only
Meet Nadia Davis, a doting mom and loving wife who has a big secret: she’s actually an assassin. And she really needs a babysitter who shows up on time.
Nadia Davis is living the dream as a successful working mom with a career she loves, two adorable little girls, and a devoted husband who has no idea that she’s secretly a hired assassin and psychopath who kills certified bad guys. So when Nadia finds out she’s been “mommy tracked” by her assassin’s agency and is no longer getting the bigger, more exciting jobs, she demands an important mark…somebody worth killing.
But it turns out that big kill is the last person she expects—her husband. How is the sweet, kind, teller-of-dad jokes she’s promised her life to an evil villain who needs exterminating? Has their whole life together been a lie? Now Nadia must choose between the two things she loves most in life, the career that keeps her sane or the family she thought she knew.
Nadia Davis is living the dream as a successful working mom with a career she loves, two adorable little girls, and a devoted husband who has no idea that she’s secretly a hired assassin and psychopath who kills certified bad guys. So when Nadia finds out she’s been “mommy tracked” by her assassin’s agency and is no longer getting the bigger, more exciting jobs, she demands an important mark…somebody worth killing.
But it turns out that big kill is the last person she expects—her husband. How is the sweet, kind, teller-of-dad jokes she’s promised her life to an evil villain who needs exterminating? Has their whole life together been a lie? Now Nadia must choose between the two things she loves most in life, the career that keeps her sane or the family she thought she knew.
304 pages, Hardcover
Expected publication June 16, 2026
2 people are currently reading
2594 people want to read
About the author
Jessica Payne
5 books453 followersJessica lives in the Pacific Northwest where the mountains and Puget Sound are home. Beyond writing, she loves to run, rock climb, and explore the great outdoors with her daughter and husband. When holding still, which isn’t often, you’ll find a book in her hand and a cat or dog in her lap. Jessica writes suspense and thriller and is the host of #MomsWritersClub on Twitter and YouTube. You can find out more about her at her website, jessicapayne.net
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
December 9, 2025
Somebody Worth Killing
By: Jessica Payne
Pub Date: June 16, 2026
Publisher: Berkley
I love all of Payne’s books, BUT this is my new FAVORITE!
This novel is based in Texas, which I loved because I recognized/loved the setting.
A couple who has secrets and they are CRAZY! The mom Naida is a mom by day and a secret assassin the rest of the time. She claims to only kill bad guys, but one day she gets hired to take care of someone she knows.
Her husband is the target! What the HECK! How can she do this? Her husband is a great person and is kind. She LOVES him, but when she hears something out of character, SHE has to PROVE he is NOT a good guy! She won’t carry out this unless she can prove he is not who she thinks he is.
He has his own secrets, and let me tell you I was completely stumped with who he truly was. I would love to see these characters again, HINT HINT Payne!
By: Jessica Payne
Pub Date: June 16, 2026
Publisher: Berkley
I love all of Payne’s books, BUT this is my new FAVORITE!
This novel is based in Texas, which I loved because I recognized/loved the setting.
A couple who has secrets and they are CRAZY! The mom Naida is a mom by day and a secret assassin the rest of the time. She claims to only kill bad guys, but one day she gets hired to take care of someone she knows.
Her husband is the target! What the HECK! How can she do this? Her husband is a great person and is kind. She LOVES him, but when she hears something out of character, SHE has to PROVE he is NOT a good guy! She won’t carry out this unless she can prove he is not who she thinks he is.
He has his own secrets, and let me tell you I was completely stumped with who he truly was. I would love to see these characters again, HINT HINT Payne!
December 8, 2025
One of the best thrillers I've read this year, Jessica Payne's newest was made to be devoured in a day--which is exactly what I did. This minivan-driving mom assassin is everything I didn't know I needed. Fans of Mr. and Mrs. Smith will adore the cat and mouse game between the sociopathic wife and her unsuspecting husband. All I ask is to be first in line to read the next one!
December 7, 2025
𝐈 𝐡𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐠𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐛𝐚𝐜𝐤 𝐭𝐨 𝐦𝐲 𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐬𝐞 𝐚𝐟𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐚 𝐤𝐢𝐥𝐥. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐦𝐞 𝐰𝐡𝐨 𝐬𝐞𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐡𝐮𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐬 𝐚𝐬 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐲...𝐝𝐨𝐞𝐬𝐧'𝐭 𝐛𝐞𝐥𝐨𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐧 𝐦𝐲 𝐟𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐥𝐲'𝐬 𝐡𝐨𝐦𝐞. 𝐈 𝐤𝐞𝐞𝐩 𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐧𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐥𝐲 𝐭𝐮𝐜𝐤𝐞𝐝 𝐚𝐰𝐚𝐲.
Being a mom is hard work. Just ask Nadia Davis, mom of two adorable girls who juggles PTA meetings, school drop-offs, grocery shopping, and being a dutiful wife with her real passion: being a hired assassin. She's careful to keep her professional and personal life separate, and her moral code means she only accepts assignments for truly awful people. But when she finds out she's being passed over for bigger jobs that will take her further from home, she demands the bigger assignments--she truly wants someone worth killing.
Be careful what you wish for, right? Nadia gets her next mark, and to her astonishment, it's her gentle, teller-of-dad-jokes Brian. And with the huge bounty on his head, he must be an awful person. Nadia does some digging and finds some holes in Brian's past; even worse, some basic recon turns up some unsettling news. Nadia is torn between the people she loves and the career that keeps the darkness at bay.
This is no doubt the author's best work to date. Payne uses Nadia’s double life as a contract assassin and a mother of two young children to explore the exhausting balancing act of modern motherhood. Nadia’s devotion to her family is sincere, yet it exists in constant tension with the hyper-vigilance demanded by her work. The conflict is amplified by showing how Nadia’s efforts to be an attentive mother and wife are continually interrupted by the pull of her obligations imposed by those who control her profession. Nadia’s attempts to compartmentalize her identities illustrate how the pressure to “do it all” becomes unsustainable, and you don't have to be a hired assassin to relate to that. With its dark humor, relatable characters, and brisk pacing, you will this one impossible to put down. Many thanks to Berkley Publishing for the early copy that will release June 16, 2026.
Being a mom is hard work. Just ask Nadia Davis, mom of two adorable girls who juggles PTA meetings, school drop-offs, grocery shopping, and being a dutiful wife with her real passion: being a hired assassin. She's careful to keep her professional and personal life separate, and her moral code means she only accepts assignments for truly awful people. But when she finds out she's being passed over for bigger jobs that will take her further from home, she demands the bigger assignments--she truly wants someone worth killing.
Be careful what you wish for, right? Nadia gets her next mark, and to her astonishment, it's her gentle, teller-of-dad-jokes Brian. And with the huge bounty on his head, he must be an awful person. Nadia does some digging and finds some holes in Brian's past; even worse, some basic recon turns up some unsettling news. Nadia is torn between the people she loves and the career that keeps the darkness at bay.
This is no doubt the author's best work to date. Payne uses Nadia’s double life as a contract assassin and a mother of two young children to explore the exhausting balancing act of modern motherhood. Nadia’s devotion to her family is sincere, yet it exists in constant tension with the hyper-vigilance demanded by her work. The conflict is amplified by showing how Nadia’s efforts to be an attentive mother and wife are continually interrupted by the pull of her obligations imposed by those who control her profession. Nadia’s attempts to compartmentalize her identities illustrate how the pressure to “do it all” becomes unsustainable, and you don't have to be a hired assassin to relate to that. With its dark humor, relatable characters, and brisk pacing, you will this one impossible to put down. Many thanks to Berkley Publishing for the early copy that will release June 16, 2026.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Netgalley ARC Review
Fun story but predictable villain.
Nadia is a wife and mother living in Texas but she’s also an assassin. She’s a self diagnosed Psychopath but she does care for her immediate family members and her friend/fellow assassin Ian. She has a “monster” inside her that urges her to kill at least once a month and she takes it by killing other bad people like Dexter.
When she realizes she has been getting easy hits in her own city and not getting more exciting hits like Ian she contacts her handler and discovers she’s been “mommy-tracked”. Even assassins are misogynists. She demands a bigger hit but realizes she bit off more than she can chew when the hit is her own husband.
Nadia begins to follow and investigate her husband to find what evil he has done to deserve to die all while doing school drop offs, trips to the zoo and Costco runs. She quickly learns her husband isn’t who she thought he was but can she kill the father of her children?
I quickly picked up who the villain was and who put the hit on her husband but didn’t predict who her husband really was or what he was doing.
Nadia is a bit of a dull character and her relationship with her husband was very blah. They have sex once a week. She loves him and her girls but they are a cover story.
This book does end on a mild cliffhanger with the villain still on the lose.
Fun story but predictable villain.
Nadia is a wife and mother living in Texas but she’s also an assassin. She’s a self diagnosed Psychopath but she does care for her immediate family members and her friend/fellow assassin Ian. She has a “monster” inside her that urges her to kill at least once a month and she takes it by killing other bad people like Dexter.
When she realizes she has been getting easy hits in her own city and not getting more exciting hits like Ian she contacts her handler and discovers she’s been “mommy-tracked”. Even assassins are misogynists. She demands a bigger hit but realizes she bit off more than she can chew when the hit is her own husband.
Nadia begins to follow and investigate her husband to find what evil he has done to deserve to die all while doing school drop offs, trips to the zoo and Costco runs. She quickly learns her husband isn’t who she thought he was but can she kill the father of her children?
I quickly picked up who the villain was and who put the hit on her husband but didn’t predict who her husband really was or what he was doing.
Nadia is a bit of a dull character and her relationship with her husband was very blah. They have sex once a week. She loves him and her girls but they are a cover story.
This book does end on a mild cliffhanger with the villain still on the lose.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Thank you to NetGalley and Berkley Publishing Group for providing this book, with my honest review below.
Somebody Worth Killing is a book that must be made into a series, both because it was the most entertaining breeze to read and because there’s so much more story left for these characters.
Nadia, a seemingly picture perfect mom is actually a psychopath assassin (but one with a sense of justice you can’t begrudge). When she finds she may be getting blocked from jobs due to being a mom she gets more than she bargained for with a hit on her own husband, leading to a perfect hunt to figure out who he really is and what his death could do to the touchstone her family provides against the killing monster within her.
This was extremely funny and engrossing, and truly I did not want it to end. Everything was perfect with this read except that once Nadia figured out what her husband is truly up to readers are rushed through a hasty conclusion. We needed more time to explore things here and definitely need to find out what is next because I assure you, there has to be more to this story.
Somebody Worth Killing is a book that must be made into a series, both because it was the most entertaining breeze to read and because there’s so much more story left for these characters.
Nadia, a seemingly picture perfect mom is actually a psychopath assassin (but one with a sense of justice you can’t begrudge). When she finds she may be getting blocked from jobs due to being a mom she gets more than she bargained for with a hit on her own husband, leading to a perfect hunt to figure out who he really is and what his death could do to the touchstone her family provides against the killing monster within her.
This was extremely funny and engrossing, and truly I did not want it to end. Everything was perfect with this read except that once Nadia figured out what her husband is truly up to readers are rushed through a hasty conclusion. We needed more time to explore things here and definitely need to find out what is next because I assure you, there has to be more to this story.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
This was a fun read. Nadia leads a double life. She's a typical young mom with a wedding planning business she runs from home. And she's an assassin for hire. Nadia grows up knowing she's different, that she doesn't look at life in quite the same way others do. Her parents don't understand her, but her grandmother seems to be a kindred spirit. She advises Nadia, if you must kill, make sure it's a bad person, someone the world would be better off without. So Nadia only accepts assignments to assassinate certified bad people. And she researches each target online, then stalks them for days until she's sure this is a bad guy: somebody worth killing. When the target turns out to be her own husband, a man she thought she knew very well, Nadia is confused. She does her online research, she follows him and she finds her husband is also leading a secret double life. But is he really a bad person?
October 26, 2025
All of Jessica Payne’s books have been absolute page-turners, but I especially connected with Nadia in this one! She’s a mom trying to balance it all: being a good wife, the best mom she can be, and managing a full-time job. The twist? Her job just happens to be as an assassin! I completely related to her struggle to “do it all,” even in the most unexpected of circumstances. The story was full of surprising twists and turns that kept me hooked…I couldn’t wait to see what would happen next. Another fantastic, fast-paced read from Jessica!
October 24, 2025
A loving mom, a devoted wife, and a total psychopath: Nadia Davis is the most unlikely assassin ever and my new favorite antiheroine. Somebody Worth Killing is wild, full of heart, and outrageously fun. I couldn’t get enough of this twisted juggling act of mom duty and contract killings—it’s Jessica Payne’s best work yet!
October 27, 2025
I was lucky enough to read an early draft of this and absolutely LOVED it -- it's fun and clever, and such a page-turner -- full review coming soon!
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews